Situated in the Pemigewasset Valley between Hill and Franklin, it gave orphans the opportunity to experience farm life. When, in 1914, it was joined to the Golden Rule Homestead, which increased the size of the property to 400 acres, it became the Golden Rule Farm. Buzzell established a cottage-style housing arrangement for orphans and taught them life skills in what first was known as the Bradley Memorial Home.

It had been the home of Daniel Webster’s sister. Buzzell, who received a gift of the 100-acre Roberts Farm in 1901. The Golden Rule Farm grew out of the work of another pastor, Rev. The orphanage was established by an act of the state legislature in 1871, and the board of directors purchased the Webster farm that October. Daniel Augustus Mack, who had been orphaned at age seven and who, as a chaplain during the Civil War, had received entreaties from dying soldiers to look after their children. The Orphan’s Home was established through the efforts of Rev. The intriguing story of Golden Rule Farm actually begins 150 years ago with the establishment in 1871 of the New Hampshire Orphans’ Home, later known as the Daniel Webster Home for Orphans, on Elms Farm, the estate owned by Daniel Webster’s family and the place where New Hampshire’s famous orator and statesman grew up.

Stone columns and a historical marker on an abandoned road are the only physical remains of a unique program that aimed to prepare young men (and a few young women) for adulthood in the early 20th century, but the legacy of Franklin’s Golden Rule Farm lives on, meeting other needs, in the form of Spaulding Academy and Family Services in Northfield. Boys of all ages received education and life skills at the Golden Rule Farm.

Golden rule farm winstead